NO COUNTRY IN EUROPE suffered more privation than Greece during
the occupation by the Axis powers. No country put up a more vigorous
resistance through guerilla action, none became the victim of
more bitter tragedy when the guerillas of the Right and Left fell
on each other. The delirious joy of liberation quickly gave way
to civil war, which was officially ended by the military and diplomatic
intervention of Britain, but in fact smouldered on, constantly
breaking out in acts of violence and bloodshed. Workers who entered
Greece at the end of 1944 were to find that political bitterness
and victimization made infinitely more difficult the task of rendering
urgently needed relief impartially and constructively. The breakdown
in the country's economy and the consequent inflation aggravated
the situation.

The first Unit members to set foot in Greece in 1944 were Lewis
Waddilove and Jack Eglon on the visit of investigation already
described. Jack stayed behind with Red Cross stores, and on 23rd
October Harold Dromard, Sydney Carter and Paul Townsend landed
at the Piraeus with the Military Liaison Headquarters staff (the
"Allied" was dropped, and A.M.L. became M.L.). They
were the advance party of the Medical Supply and Transport Unit
(M.S.T.U.). Living in part of a burnt out warehouse at Faliron
Bay, they set to work at once on sorting the bulk medical stores
which were arriving, and preparing them for distribution by antiquated
Red Cross lorries and converted buses. Soon they took on the additional
job of checking out from the depot many thousands of tons of food
supplies. Work was complicated by frequent strikes caused by the
physical weakness of the Greek workmen and by the political bitterness
which was growing hourly.

On 24th November Bill Buck and Don Nicol arrived, bringing
the first two of the M.S.T.U.'s own trucks. They set to work on
the distribution of medical requirements to hospitals in the Athens
area. But Athens was not the whole of Greece: the plan had been
to set up in the provinces machinery for stores distribution,
and on 2nd December, as a beginning, Sydney Carter and Paul Townsend
left for Patras and Preveza respectively.

In Athens there had already been spasmodic firing at night.
On 3rd December a state of emergency was declared. Three days
later it was war.

The rest of the month brought feverish activity. There was
no Greek labour at the store; the British personnel set to work
on issuing supplies to hospitals and medical posts on both sides.
A First Aid Post was set up at the depot. On their journeys they
ran into frequent firing. A diary records:

"Just short of University were stopped by Greek Red Cross
man and five frantic nurses who wanted us to help wounded British
soldier. Proceeded up long side road only to find ourselves right
in the thick of E.L.A.S. there was no going back. Overshot the
turning where wounded were. Left Bill & Co. with truck and
went on to scene of injured with Red Cross man waving his flag
violently amidst crackle of firearms. We made seemingly endless
trek up bad road at foot of Likavittos . . . could see one or
two British . . . shouted I was coming for wounded . . located
one injured and then found E.L.A.S. had stipulated surrender
of his rifle as price of pass through their lines. British O.C.
on other side of road refused to let us leave on such terms and
said they were in tight corner but tank and armoured cars coming
. . . . Both retraced our steps in deadly silence."

"E.L.A.S. sniper at bottom of road up which I had started
had been hit and wounded badly in the neck. Bill and Don ran
gauntlet of British fire across street corner . . . told when
to run by E.L.A.S. leader . . . dressed wound before he went
to hospital close by. . ."

In the meantime Jack Eglon was establishing the British Red
Cross store as well as being for a time imprisoned in hospital.

The main body of voluntary society teams for Greece had been
due to leave Egypt in November. It did not arrive until 11th January;
it was accompanied by Philip Sanford, who, as representative of
all the voluntary societies, was to take over the distracting
problems of liaison with U.N.R.R.A. and M.L. Meanwhile the original
workers, together with a further group of drivers under Harry
Skewes, who were able to land after riding off the Piraeus for
nearly a fortnight, carried on the work of relief.

The Unit's Relief and Refugee Unit was destined for Ipiros
in Western Greece. The war made that impossible. Instead, some
members were added to those already on transport work. This involved
the evacuation of patients from E.L.A.S. hospitals and the collection
of supplies and carriage of foodstuffs through the agreed truce
lines in order to feed and bring back to Athens the hostages released
by the retreating E.L.A.S. armies. One trip took three members
south to Tripous. On the way they were warned that no British
personnel would be allowed into E.L.A.S. territory, but, unwilling
to return without delivering their supplies, they posed as Americans
and carried it off successfully even through a banquet given in
their honour by the local heads of E.L.A.S. and attended by two
prominent civilians who had spent twenty-five years in the States.

Of the remainder of the R.R.U., Peter Ure attended to disinfestation,
registration and the provision of rudimentary medical and welfare
requirements at the Hostages' Reception Centre in Athens, while
the women members worked on the inspection of two women's prisons
where political prisoners were herded together under inhuman conditions.

At the end of January the R.R.U. was reassembled and ordered
to Corfu. They sailed for Taranto and there joined forces with
the Albanian Mobile Hygiene and First Aid Unit under Ray Bollam.
Hopes of relief work in Albania were indefinitely delayed for
political reasons; the M.H.F.A.U. was transferred and the two
teams together reached Corfu on 13th February.

Meanwhile in Athens the work of the M.S.T.U., the numbers of
which from various societies rose eventually to forty-two---Harold
Dromard was in charge of the whole team, to which the F.A.U. contributed
eight---continued its work. So far events had made it live from
day to day. But now, with the truce, a new system of distribution
was worked out and steps taken to concentrate at a central warehouse
the medical supplies which were at the time scattered in Greek
Red Cross, M.L. and Government stores. Four F.A.U. members were
attached to this central warehouse, which dealt with the distribution
of supplies for all Greece under a joint Medical Supply Committee
consisting of the Greek Red Cross, the Swiss Commission, the Greek
Government, and M.L.

Transport and drivers were kept fully occupied as drugs were
distributed in the region of Attica and sent down to the docks
for shipment to the islands, then on longer journeys north to
Volos, Salonika and Kavalla, west to Patras, Preveza and Ioannina.
The aim was to establish as soon as possible an effective system
which could be handed over to the Greeks themselves.

There were muddles and delays, inevitable in the state of the
country ; stores accumulated to the embarrassment of storekeepers
because the joint Committee could not agree on a settled policy
of distribution. But the work went on. As the Athens warehouses
became more established, the chief need for supervision lay in
the provinces.

Sydney Carter had arrived in Patras early in December, but
in the middle of the month was evacuated to Italy in view of the
disturbances. He himself returned later to Athens for special
work on educational surveys with U.N.R.R.A.; the stores work at
Patras was taken over by Brindley Marten, who remained until March
1946. Similarly Paul Townsend had acted as representative in Preveza
until he was evacuated to Corfu, where he remained to deal with
incoming medical supplies. Here he was joined in February by the
M.H.F.A.U. and R.R.U. which came over from Taranto. Together they
crossed over to the mainland, and Paul once more became M.S.T.U.
representative in Preveza and later in Ioannina.

During the autumn and winter of 1945-46 the main depots in
Athens, controlling about 85 per cent. of all supplies entering
the country, and sub-depts in Patras, Ioannina and Irakiion in
Crete were handed over to the Greeks, and in the others responsibility
for supervision and the eventual transfer passed to U.N.R.R.A.;
Greek personnel had already been installed.

Over a period of approximately twelve months the M.S.T.U. transport
fleet of twenty-three vehicles had covered approximately 250,000
miles; in six months 30,000 cases of medical supplies were issued
from Athens. As a joint concern of four British societies and
the Greek Red Cross, the M.S.T.U. had done a job which would otherwise
certainly have remained undone.

ON 13TH FEBRUARY 1945 the R.R.U. under Don Pitcher and the
M.H.F.A.U. under Ray Bollam arrived in Corfu, or, to give it its
Greek name, Kerkira. After a chequered history from the sixteenth
century onwards of occupation by Venetians, French and British
in turn, the island was restored to Greece in 1867. The present
population is about 100,000 of whom 30,000 live in the capital
city, also, called Kerkira. Their livelihood comes from olive
oil, livestock, the burning of charcoal, and, in peacetime, from
tourists.

The situation when the Unit arrived was described by a member
of the R.R.U.:

"At the outset of the civil war the forces of the right-wing
guerilla leader Zervas were partly destroyed and partly ejected
from Ipiros by E.L.A.S. Some two thousand guerillas thus flooded
into Kerkira, and with them eight thousand civilian refugees
fleeing from the real and imagined dangers of the Elasite administration.
With their atrocity stories and their violent opinions they were
a source of considerable unrest among the relatively neutral
and peace-loving islanders.

"But however much one might disagree with the political
opinions of the refugees, one had to recognize that they presented
a problem in terms of human need and suffering. Most of them
came with only such possessions as they could personally carry.
During their stay in Kerkira their food rations, distributed
free by M.L., were pitifully inadequate, sometimes consisting
simply of a pound of bread per day. The great majority were clad
literally in rags. . ."

The refugees were divided between the city and five inland
villages, and the three M.L. officers and three U.N.R.R.A. officials
had shared between them the responsibility for Corfiotes and refugees.
The M.H.F.A.U. planned two main pieces of work. The medical section
formed a mobile clinic which visited the refugee villages weekly
and other villages at shorter or longer intervals, while the hygiene
section disinfested the refugee barracks and villages and undertook
anti-malarial surveys.

The R.R.U. instituted two Information Offices, one for Corfiotes
and the other for refugees. In addition to their main function
they gave opportunity for case-work and estimation of need.

But estimation of need was beside the point in the absence
of food supplies. A supply ship had broken down; two other shiploads
were to arrive in due course, but meanwhile the team decided to
concentrate on the one commodity available, thirteen tons of clothes
sent from America.

Unpacking and sorting and sizing of the clothes, registration
on a specially devised system of cards on which particulars and
requirements of the needy were noted with the help of local committees,
and then the distribution---there can have been few jobs more
nervously exhausting than trying to handle the jostling throngs
of refugees at a clothing distribution.

While working as a nurse with the M.H.F.A.U. in Corfu, Norah
Protheroe was taken ill. She was moved to Athens, and finally
to Naples to be brought to England by hospital ship. But on 8th
May, while still in Naples, she died.

Norah was older than the average Unit member. She had taken
up nursing late, and had worked with a Nigerian Mission and as
a district nurse in the north of Scotland before joining the Unit.
Intensely shy and retiring, she did not find it easy to fit in
with a team of younger people, but those who came to know her
best realized that her life was indeed, as a friend wrote of her,
"devoted under considerable strain and with courageous self-sacrifice
to the relief of suffering".

Some useful work was done on Corfu, but it was not a satisfactory
situation. The destination of the teams was Ipiros, as soon as
conditions allowed them to go across; on the island they were
living from day to day. The shortage of supplies added to their
difficulties.

At the end of March they were asked by U.N.R.R.A. to cross
to the mainland; an advance team of three was first sent to survey
the situation. In Preveza, the chief port of Ipiros, they soon
found, lying scattered among several warehouses, a hundred tons
of gift clothing with no prospect of its distribution. So the
major part of the two teams was summoned. By mid-April some twenty
members had arrived; and on 8th May Kerkira was finally quitted.

Lewis Waddilove arrived on a visit from Rome just as the first
party was going across. In the discussion of policy that took
place it was decided to amalgamate the two teams into one section
for economy and flexibility, and the F.A.U. West Greece Station
came into being, with Don Pitcher in charge.

The section became responsible for the Unit's largest piece
of work in Greece, work that can best be described from a report
which Don Pitcher wrote a few months later.

"Even in the height of her pre-war prosperity, Greece
was a very poor country, judged by Western standards. Her wealth,
such as it was, was largely due to her merchant navy and her
extensive commercial undertakings. The rural areas remained sunk
in poverty, and of all these, Ipiros was the most neglected.

"Ipiros is a barren province, redeemed only by the productive
vale of Ioannina, and the fertile plains of Arta and Fanari.
Its industries were almost negligible, and the population was
largely rural; the 1942 estimates show only four towns with over
5,000 inhabitants, out of a total population of 366,000. Agricultural
possibilities were never exploited to the full.

"Communications were always bad. There were no railways
in the province; the main roads included two going north-south
and one east-west, with an occasional subsidiary road, and nothing
else but mule-tracks. The medical services, in a region with
the highest incidence of malaria in the country, were grossly
insufficient; the area was served by three hospitals. in Ioannina,
one (incomplete) in Filiates, one in Preveza, and a projected
building in Arta. There were few doctors in the villages, and
their charges for consultation were exorbitant.

"None the less, actual destitution and starvation were
probably infrequent. The villagers maintained the pastoral existence
they had led for centuries, and managed to keep themselves warm
by weaving their own clothes from their sheep and goats.

"Then came the war. The Italian campaign of 1940-41 was
fought, as far as Greek territory was concerned, entirely in
Ipiros. Igoumenitsa, the western port, was heavily bombarded,
and large tracts of the country were ravaged by the invading
armies. Following on the German occupation in April 1941, the
Italians once again took possession of Ipiros, accompanied by
large numbers of Turko-Albanians, who viewed the north of the
province as properly belonging to their country. Later on, the
Germans themselves took control of Ipiros, and the long period
of guerilla warfare began.

"Lengthy talks which we have all had with both townsfolk
and villagers indicate quite clearly that the Italians and Albanians
were hated more bitterly than the Germans. The former showed
great personal cruelty to the people, while the Germans, on their
many punitive expeditions, usually warned the inhabitants that
they proposed to destroy a village on such-and-such a date, allowing
them time to flee with as many of their possessions as they could
carry to the mountains before the soldiers proceeded to a systematic
burning of all the houses. We are constantly being bombarded
in this office with petitions from villages relating their sufferings
during the occupations, and urging special assistance.

"None of the conquerors managed to control any large
area apart from the main towns and roads; and the mountain districts
were rarely out of the hands of one or other of the guerilla
organizations. The extreme north and east were from the first
controlled by E.A.M. and its army, E.L.A.S.: the south and east
were occupied by E.D.E.S., the right wing pro-royalist party
of General Zervas. When the Germans began to withdraw in the
late summer of 1944, the enmity flared up into open hostility.
Zervas was penned into the Preveza area, until he was finally
defeated by E.L.A.S. and the remnants of his shattered army escaped
to Kerkira.

"The combined effect of these war years was tremendous.
The ports were rendered almost valueless (the last act of the
retreating Zervas being to destroy the Preveza water-front) ;
nearly a hundred villages had been totally burnt; agricultural
produce, ploughs, and draught-animals had been looted wholesale;
the output of crops had dropped by 35 per cent. of its pre-war
average; no attempts had been made to control pests, so that
the locust and the grape-blight flourished mightily ; the northern
strip of Ipiros was almost entirely depopulated, as the large
numbers of Albanian inhabitants had been chased out or killed;
the towns were crowded out with refugees pouring in from the
devastated countryside; education had come almost to a standstill
with the destruction of the schools and the intimidation of the
teachers; and the incidence of disease multiplied as the unreplenished
medical stocks disappeared."

It was in this region that the Unit was to work. Its first
job was one of clothing distribution.

"The discovery of one hundred tons of gift clothing in
Preveza led to the question of who was responsible for its distribution.
The Joint Relief Commission in Ipiros was practically dormant,
and U.N.R.R.A. had no personnel available for the task. The U.N.R.R.A.
Regional Director readily agreed that the F.A.U. should undertake
the work, and devolved full responsibility for the entire distribution
in Ipiros.

"We set up our H.Q. in Ioannina, having first found a
commodious store for the clothing inside the ancient citadel
of Ah Pasha, the 'Lion of Janina'. We then set about the formation
of a Central Clothing Committee for the nomos, and the first
meeting, which was presided over by the Acting-Governor, and
included the Bishop, two prominent townspeople, the U.N.R.R.A.
Distribution Officer and myself, handed the executive authority
over to the Bishop and me.

"Athanasios, Bishop of Vellas, immediately showed himself
an energetic and invaluable ally. He provided us with an excellent
storekeeper, and mustered some dozen ladies to assist in the
work of sorting the clothes.

"'We decided that we ourselves would visit the villages,
and fix the actual allocations after full investigations on the
spot.

"Ten members immediately set out, in pairs, and within
a fortnight had visited over a hundred villages, gaining the
necessary information about their state, deciding how many should
be clothed in each, and instructing the committees to return
to our office completed lists of the indigent up to the number
given. As soon as these returns arrived, they were checked off
against the clothing cards we had brought over from Kerkira,
to make sure that no returned refugees who had already received
clothes should benefit a second time. Then indents were made
out on the store for the necessary number of garments, the village
committees were notified when the clothes would be taken to the
nearest roadhead, and the loaded trucks were despatched to this
point. The committee then became responsible for the distribution
of clothes, the recording of the articles given to each family,
the signature of the recipient, and the return of the completed
lists to our office.

"At the same time that we started our village visitations
in Ioannina nomos, we felt it right to get things moving on similar
lines in the other nomoi. Kanty Cooper went to Igoumenitsa on
27th April, Mary Shaw to Arta on 29th April, and Gordon Tilsley
to Preveza on 8th May, where they proceeded to set up central
committees, and to organize the work of sorting clothes in the
store.

"It was not to be expected that the work would proceed
smoothly and without complaints. In fact, a considerable number
of petitions have poured into the office stating that this or
that committee has held back the clothes, or has made political
discriminations, or has distributed lavishly among its own families
and left only the poorer quality garments for the rest of the
community.

"The decision that only by seeing for ourselves the state
of the villages could we hope to ensure equitable distribution,
proved one of incalculable value, not only for the purposes of
the clothing scheme, but also by showing us where the greatest
needs lay and how best we could help. The visits also had the
psychological value, not to be lightly discounted after four
years of terror, of making the people feel that at last someone
was taking a personal interest in their welfare.

"As one visit was very like another, perhaps I may quote
from my own experiences as recorded in my journal.

"'As we had three other villages to visit before nightfall,
we pressed on and after pausing by a spring on the hillside to
eat our lunch, we came in half an hour or so to Manassi. It was
burnt to the ground. The situation was indescribably tragic.
The village was in a perfect Arcadian setting, nestling half
way up the mountainside, with the glorious shades of spring colours
transforming the scene to a riot of supreme loveliness; and yet
the village resembled nothing so much as a quarry, or a particularly
ghastly bombed site in East London. The Germans had destroyed
it in October 1943 on one of their punitive expeditions which
ravaged the whole valley; not a house was standing, and the two
hundred inhabitants were living in the ruins. Yet close to the
wrecked church still stood an enormous plane-tree circled with
stone seats, where the elders met to arrange the parish affairs;
and here we found the committee. One aged character appeared,
and escorted us round the village, showing the three houses which
he had built on his return from fifty years as a merchant in
Rumania---fine houses once, but now reduced to piles of rubble,
in the midst of which the old man stood and wept.'"

It was against such a background that the organization of relief
proceeded.

"The Ioannina Social Welfare Committee was set up at
the end of April at the instigation of the Ministry of Social
Welfare, which had been persuaded by U.N.R.R.A. to pass a bill
setting up welfare centres in each nomos, the function of the
committee being to organize the work of the centre. Harry Skewes
was asked to sit on the committee from the second meeting onwards.

"In the early days it was apparent that the idea of opening
a welfare centre on the lines laid down was a little ambitious,
so, as a start, an information office was opened, and housed
most unsuitably in a room in the Bishop's office---a dingy enough
affair never empty of visiting priests waiting to see their Bishop.
Harry endeavoured to impress upon the latter the need for privacy
in case-work and interviews, with the result that every time
he walked into the office all the Greeks left it.

"The committee members showed little initiative, and
business seemed likely to come to a standstill, so we suggested
that they should become responsible for distributing clothes
to the indigent of the town. After some dispute, they capitulated,
and the Dhimarkh was authorized to set up parish committees to
compile lists of the needy. The Bishop promptly forbade his priests
to serve on the parish committees; and when we quoted the law
to him, said that it would probably be superseded by another
shortly, and anyway he would take responsibility for his actions.

"It was obvious yet again that nothing would be achieved
unless we did it ourselves. So Harry got hold of the first parish
committee, and after much hesitation on their part, they set
to work to determine need, interviewing about a hundred people
(thirty families) a day. Clothes were promptly despatched from
our store, and eighty people were clothed on the first day. On
seeing that it could be done, the Dhimarkh was filled with enthusiasm,
summoned the other committees in turn, and had thousands of forms
printed, in spite of Harry's warning that the forms intended
for use throughout Greece would be arriving from Athens any day.

"At this stage, the Governor-General returned from a
protracted visit to Athens, and was astounded to hear that the
Welfare Committee had been meeting for so long. He said that
the law (of which he at last had a copy) stated that the committee
had to be convened by the Archbishop of Ioannina, who had left
Ipiros in February and wasn't returning for at least ten days.
However, when Harry told him that the distribution would stop
if the committees were disbanded, he authorized us to continue
compiling the lists of indigent.

"Our main energies had been directed towards the completion
of the clothing programme, and although it was evident that the
food in Ioannina was not getting out to the villages as it should
(some villages had not received rations for several months),
there was little we could do to assist, beyond lending an occasional
truck to transport supplies to the roadheads.

"However, when Kanty Cooper reported from Thesprotia
that the whole organization of that nomos was in chaos, and when
M.L. finally pulled out at the end of May leaving no U.N.R.R.A.
officials at all in the area, it became clear that here lay another
field for endeavour, and on 29th May, Ralph Connelly (who had
been mainly responsible for organizing the clothing distributions
in Corfu and Ipiros) went down to Igoumenitsa with a mandate
as U.N.R.R.A. Distribution Officer.

"On paper, the situation looked impressive, as during
April and May Thesprotia appeared to have had four food distributions
compared with one for Ioannina. But inquiry showed that the distribution
had been very inequitable. Government officials had favoured
their own districts ; it was doubtful whether the more distant
villages had received their due ; there were only two trucks
available for transporting food to the roadheads, with the result
that the mass of supplies was bottlenecked in Igoumenitsa warehouses.

"As a result of Ralph's stay in Thesprotia, order was
evolved out of chaos. A definite programme was laid down whereby
monthly allocations were made to the four Eparkhiai---the Rural
Districts---and from thence to the villages ; all orders were
first seen by Ralph, who could check the accuracy of the allocations
U.N.R.R.A. and the Government brought in adequate transport to
deal with the distribution, and Ken Cue went to take charge of
all the trucks and to arrange the orderly distribution of supplies
until such time as a Greek Transport Officer was appointed; a
complete survey of the state of the roads was made, and a report
presented as to essential priorities for repairs ; the Agricultural
Bank was bombarded by Ralph with a plan for the shipment of supplies
via Kerkira direct to Parga, Igoumenitsa, and Sayiadha Bay, rather
than from Preveza en bloc to Igoumenitsa, where the warehousing
space was insufficient; and medical committees, both central
and eparkhial, were set up.

"This is not to say that all difficulties have been removed,
but at least the people can now be assured of getting their proper
share of the food supplies."

Distribution of supplies was one problem; another was medical
attention.

"When we arrived in Ioannina, we had no clear picture
of the medical needs, nor of the best use that could be made
of medical and hygiene personnel. There were practically no medical
stores, except a handful which Paul Townsend had brought across
from Kerkira; and there was no U.N.R.R.A. Medical Officer. Fortunately,
we were able to keep members busy on the clothing distribution,
while Dr. Joan Franklin-Adams (a British Red Cross worker attached
to the F.A.U.) made inquiries as to possible lines of action.

"The local authorities produced an impressive list of
twenty-nine doctors in the town and thirty-nine in the rural
districts, but investigation showed that at least four of these
were dead and several others were no longer in Ipiros. So the
list was reduced to forty effective personnel, until our village
visits proved that many of the rural physicians were elderly
and decrepit, that they were in charge of groups of scattered
communities which they were quite unable to visit, and that they
charged such exorbitant prices for a mere consultation that the
vast majority of the peasants could not afford to ask for advice,
much less treatment.

"The incidence of malaria was very high---in some villages
100 per cent. And many communities were afflicted with a large
percentage of scabies.

"Some work, therefore, was immediately possible. Dr.
Franklin-Adams helped some of the Ioannina doctors who paid visits
to the villages on Sundays: she also went out herself during
the week to different parts of the nomos served by no doctors,
and made surveys of the institutions in the towns of Joannina,
Arta and Preveza; sulphur ointment and soap were taken to the
scabies spots, and a number of communities were instructed in
the method of treatment; the Ioannina prison was disinfested
with D.D.T. a typhoid outbreak was discovered in the Konitsa
area, the population was inoculated, and instructions were given
regarding the water supply ; and the vaccination of children
was set on foot.

"Meanwhile, the U.N.R.R.A. Regional M.O.H. appeared;
and at long last, partly through his constant signals to Athens,
partly as a result of my persistent badgering of the authorities
there during a visit, but mainly because the problem of a three-month-old
bottleneck in the Piraeus was suddenly resolved, medical supplies
began to appear, first in driblets, then in a flood.

"At the same time, the development of a more satisfactory
medical programme became possible, and this coincided with the
discovery that in Thesprotia there were no hospitals, and only
eight doctors, two of whom were too old for duty. Also, another
doctor, Pat Griffin, joined us from Ethiopia, and Lewis Waddilove
arrived from Rome with the news that the Unit was prepared to
assist any developments with money and extra medical goods.

"Investigations on the spot showed that the best work
could be done by establishing a clinic in the centre of Thesprotia,
where one of the doctors could give drugs, advice and treatment.
This would form the base for a mobile clinic into the surrounding
villages of the Fanari plain, the fertile valley in the south
of the nomos which is the most disease-ridden part of the Ipiros.

"On 2nd July, therefore, Pat Griffin went to Paramithia,
and, in co-operation with the two local doctors, set up the clinic."

Such was the gist of the section's report published in July
1945.

For the second half of the year they built on these foundations.

During the autumn work tended to concentrate on Thesprotia,
in which province the Unit found itself in full charge, occupying
all the posts of U.N.R.R.A. responsibility. Ralph Connelly was
succeeded by Ken Cue as Distribution Officer, Donald Swann became
Welfare Officer, and Willie Beamer was responsible for an U.N.R.R.A.
scheme to eliminate malaria in the Fanari plain, working with
a staff of fifteen men, transport, and supplies of D.D.T. powder
and diesel oil.

The establishment and supervision of the clinics was continued
by the two doctors. In Paramithia at first the F.A.U. paid the
rent of the premises taken over ; later the local authorities
provided and equipped rooms in the municipal offices. Pat Griffin
left the Paramithia clinic well established at the end of August,
and in December it was flourishing under a doctor paid by the
Greek War Relief Association of America. Further clinics were
set up at Parga, Filiates and Ayii Pandes ; the last was used
as a base for work in the north of the nomos. Once the clinics
had been shown to fill an obvious need, the Greek doctors began
to take an interest in the scheme, and a deputation to Athens
induced the Government to pay salaries to clinic doctors who worked
among peasants unable to afford payment. Younger doctors were
persuaded to return to Thesprotia and several clinics were placed
on a permanent basis.

In Igoumenitsa a doctor was found; the difficulty lay in finding
suitable premises, but finally three rooms were secured in the
unfinished Town Hall and the F.A.U. undertook part of the cost
of putting the rooms in order.

Work on clothing distribution and general welfare continued
in the rest of Ipiros. In the latter sphere five members joined
the U.N.R.R.A. staff. The war was over, the F.A.U. would soon
be coming to an end, and those who wished to carry on after the
Unit's withdrawal were well advised to transfer.

At the beginning of the year, the Unit was preparing to withdraw.
How far the special schemes that had been established would last
became increasingly doubtful in view of the precarious political
and economic situation ; but the several members who stayed on
in the territory with U.N.R.R.A. were able to supervise developments
through a further phase. Meanwhile something had been done to
help Ipiros over the first stile.

THE UNIT PROVIDED two Field Bacteriological Units for the Balkans,
No. 1 F.B.U. for Jugoslavia and No. 2 F.B.U. for Greece. The latter
was formed later, but was at work long before its unlucky counterpart.

It arrived in Athens late in January 1945. Its first job was
to work with a Water Purification Unit of the International Voluntary
Service for Peace in a large-scale inspection and testing of all
the secondary water supplies in the Athens area, until in March
the work was handed over to members of the Greek School of Hygiene.

The team was moved to the west. Based on Patras, it was to
make a survey of the water supply in Western Greece, as part of
the U.N.R.R.A. programme. There was no Public Health Laboratory
Service in Greece outside Athens and Salonika, and in the west
the condition of urban and rural water supplies and sanitation
was unknown.

With a laboratory in an as yet unopened children's hospital,
to which they were able to arrange extensive repairs, the members
of the team proceeded to make weekly examinations of the Patras
supply and carried out a survey throughout the region, carefully
planning their journeys to enable samples to be brought back to
the laboratory within the maximum time allowable for a reliable
result. The Patras supply was found to be occasionally contaminated
and the local authorities were eventually persuaded to carry on
a system of chlorination which had been started on a temporary
basis by the military.

In all, up to November 1945, they carried out twenty-five full
sanitary surveys and examined supplies in sixty-one towns and
villages in the nomoi of Achaia, Aitolia-Akarnania, Ilis, Argolis-Corinth,
Preveza, and Arta, and in the islands of Kefallinia and Zakinthos.
In only seven did they find a drinkable supply, and arrangements
were put in hand by the U.N.R.R.A. Regional Sanitary Engineer
for improving the supplies in the winter of 1945-46.

Throughout the survey, Greek technicians and engineers worked
with the team, and the foundations of a permanent public health
organization began to take shape. In Patras a Public Health Laboratory
was set up in November to serve the medical needs of the city
and region. Support and help came from many sources, including
army units in the neighbourhood. Two Greek technicians were trained
by the team and showed promise of becoming efficient at their
job. At the official opening of the Laboratory the Mayor made
a speech in eloquent praise of the work accomplished, and formally
named it after the leader of the team, the "Wilfred Daily
Laboratory".

In November 1945 the team was moved up to Edessa in Macedonia
to carry out the type of work accomplished in the west, and in
addition to produce a survey of the incidence of venereal disease
in the whole province. The work kept it busy for the first half
of 1946.

In the summer of 1946 the team was awaiting transport home
to Britain when one of its members died. Dennis Mann had been
in charge of the Typhus Team which went out to Naples early in
1944 and had worked on relief in Italy for a year before being
transferred to work in Greece.

Such were the main fields of work which Unit members found
for themselves in Greece. Individuals were engaged on other activities.
John Sykes, who had a longer continuous period of service overseas
than any other member---he went to Finland and was still overseas
when the end of the war in Europe came---was seconded to the Welfare
Division of U.N.R.R.A. in Athens; Michael Asquith and Sydney Carter
worked together for a time on a Swiss Red Cross child-feeding
and milk-distribution scheme in the Peloponnese ; and Dr. Ken
Llewellin, and later Paul Green, became responsible for a medical
caique which sailed from island to island in the Cyclades, many
of which were without doctors or medical facilities of any kind.

THE DODECANESE

THE DODECANESE ISLANDS, lying off the south-west coast of Asia
Minor, had been by spirit and tradition and population predominantly
Greek ever since, in the dawn of Greek history, settlers from
the mainland had colonized the coast of Asia Minor and the islands
that lay around it. But politically they had belonged in turn
to many conquerors, and since 1912 had been in Italian hands.
The war in the islands had been uneventful, the most important
factor being the British blockade, which began as soon as Italy
entered the war. After the surrender of Italy, the British made
their attempt on Leros and Kos which went awry; then the Italians
tried to retain control of their islands for the allies, but the
smaller German forces gained the mastery. Some of the small outlying
islands fell, but the main islands of Rhodes and Leros remained
in German hands until the end of the war in Europe.

Conditions in the occupied islands were terrible, especially
in the winter months. In the winter of 1944-45 refugees were pouring
out of Rhodes and others of the larger islands, and were encouraged
by the Germans to do so. Caiques laden with the hungry and sick
dumped their cargoes on the coast of Turkey, where they were neither
welcomed nor well treated. So a regular traffic began away from
Turkey to some of the islands already in British hands. Picked
up at Marmorice or other points on the Turkish coast by caiques,
the captains of which made fortunes in the process, the refugees
reached Simi, a small island north of Rhodes, and were thence
sent on to Kasos and later to the larger island of Karpathos---the
two islands which lie in a direct line between Rhodes and Crete.

Unit work in the Dodecanese fell into three clear phases. Starting
in January 1945, a small section based on Simi helped with the
staging and escort of the refugees between the Turkish coast and
Kasos and Karpathos; then larger groups became responsible for
the refugee camps on the two islands ; finally, in May, as soon
as Rhodes was freed, the main body of the section, relieved of
work in the other islands since the refugees were mostly able
to return home, moved in and embarked on various forms of relief
work for those already in the island and for returning refugees.

It will be recalled that of the Mobile Hygiene and First Aid
Units assembled in Egypt in the autumn of 1944 it was thought
that the one destined for the Dodecanese would be the first to
move off. In fact, it was the last, and, after a period at the
camp at Nuseirat, it found itself back at Maadi. As a team it
was larger than the normal M.H.F.A.U., having three Greek Red
Cross nurses in addition to the full F.A.U. complement.

As the Dodecanese islands were ex-enemy territory, U.N.R.R.A.
was at first to have no hand in their relief; all arrangements
were made through the Civil Affairs Branch of the Army, which
for the Dodecanese carried the title of British Military Administration
AT(B)i. The advance Headquarters of this body during the early
autumn of 1944 were on Cyprus, and here Brindley Marten had spent
some weeks engaged in the division of medical stores into lots
for the various islands, producing a guide to their use for the
doctors and chemists of the Dodecanese, and eventually escorting
a convoy of stores back to Haifa.

The M.H.F.A.U. was still in Egypt when, in January 1945, AT(B)1
suddenly requested a group of five men to work with refugees on
the island of Simi. Two members of the M.H.F.A.U. were detached,
and with three new arrivals from England they formed F.A.U. Relief
Detachment No. 1 On 29th January, with Fulque Agnew in charge,
they arrived in Simi.

Here, at a monastery gloriously situated in a cove at Panormiti,
they found a refugee staging camp full to over-flowing. Shipments
were constantly arriving from Marmorice, and to relieve the pressure,
parties of refugees had to be made up hurriedly and sent on to
Kasos. The Relief Detachment divided itself into two groups, one
to take over and organize the camp in Panormiti, the other to
provide escorts on the caiques as they sailed on to Kasos.

The camp, which on their arrival contained 600 refugees, had
no office and no records, no system of disinfestation or routine
medical examination, no hygiene or medical supplies. The first
job, constantly interrupted by the arrival of fresh refugees,
was to provide essential supplies, open an office, provide adequate
records, clear and clean the reception block, arrange for the
routine medical examination of new arrivals, organize camp labour
and have a committee of the refugees appointed to help with the
management. Medical care was greatly improved by the arrival of
an Indian doctor and later of Miss Saddler, a matron of the Queen
Alexandra Imperial and Military Nursing Service. A small hospital
was organized, and later a milk clinic for expectant mothers,
young children and invalids.

The condition in which many of the refugees arrived can best
be illustrated by quotation from a report on the arrival of the
caique Minelder; its condition had been almost rivalled by a previous
caique which arrived ten days before.

"The Caique Minelder dropped anchor in Panormiti Bay
on Sunday, 25th February 1945. Two members of the Relief Detachment
went aboard immediately in order to estimate the number of refugees
and to survey conditions. They found that the refugees were overcrowded
to such an extent that it was quite impossible for all of them
to lie down at the same time, and only just possible for all
to sit down at the same time. The refugees stated that they had
been aboard for seven days.

"There were, of course, no sanitary facilities, and the
decks, both above and below, were indescribably foul. There were
rations aboard (chiefly corned-beef and biscuits) but there was
no water left and there was no provision for water storage on
the caique. A large number of those on board were hoarse or voiceless,
probably due to lack of water. Nearly all passengers on the upper-deck
were suffering from exposure and extreme exhaustion. A considerable
number were hysterical and one man appeared to be insane.

"There were many very old and feeble persons, and many
very young and sickly infants aboard who could not be expected
to survive if required to continue their voyage.

"In the circumstances it was quite impossible to make
a reasonable estimate of the numbers aboard. A figure of 750
was hazarded as a guess.

"When the preliminary, report was received a small caique
(Ioanna) was put into service.

"Matron Miss Saddler, a third member of the Relief Detachment,
and a group of picked volunteers from the Panormiti refugees
boarded the Minelder, vetted all the refugees on board, and disembarked
those whose condition was such that they could not be expected
to survive the journey to Kasos.

"When the refugees on board the Minelder learned that
some of their number were to be disembarked they became quite
wild. A large number attempted to get ashore; some tried to jump
overboard.

"Ninety of the worse cases were brought ashore. Of these,
two died before reaching hospital, and a third died thirty-six
hours later.

"The rest were extremely emaciated as a result of starvation
over a long period. Some of the adults were unable to walk without
assistance and several crawled on all fours when conducted to
their quarters. Many of the children were in advanced stages
of starvation ; several had lost control of their muscles and
had to be carried from one place to another. Three small children
averred that both their parents had died on the Minelder. Other
families reported deaths during the voyage."

Three months later, as the work in Simj was coming to an end,
a report by a visiting officer commented:

"The whole camp was a model of cleanliness and order.
Bakeries, a café and all the familiar facilities of a
well-run community had been established. The official reports
on the camp had commented on the high standard which the leader
of the group had set."

When, early in February, members of the Relief Detachment engaged
on escort work arrived in Kasos, they found that Raymond Mills,
the Medical Officer of the M.H.F.A.U., had preceded them with
an advance party of AT(B)1 from Egypt. Before the middle of the
month the rest of the M.H.F.A.U. arrived with all its stores,
and work could begin in earnest. But Kasos in turn was becoming
overcrowded. New arrivals were diverted to Karpathos and there
three members began work.

Simi, Kasos, Karpathos-they were a particularly suitable field
for the activities of an emergency organization. Full responsibility
for the management of the refugee camps was in due course handed
over to the Unit, which was enabled to build up the organization
from the beginning and see the work through, until the final dispersal
of the refugees back to their own islands brought it to a natural
end.

On Kasos, the two villages of Panayia and Ayia Marina had been
almost cleared of their inhabitants to accommodate refugees when
the M.H.F.A.U. arrived, the villages contained between them two
thousand refugees. In March a tented camp was opened at Fonte,
exclusively for Italians---for one of the problems previously
had been the mixing of Greeks and Italians---and in the three
camps work proceeded through the spring. At the end of March the
team had an administration of three in each camp, while four members
covered the jobs of medical officer, dispenser, quartermaster
and hygiene supervisor for the whole island. As fresh shiploads
of refugees arrived, Ray Mills found it useful to combine disembarkation
and medical examination. Refugees were then sent ashore in families,
registered, and sent up to the camps where billeting, ration arrangements
and issues of clothing followed. It gradually became possible
to add to the camps such welfare activities as milk centres, baby
clinics, barbers' shops and schools, and the Italians ran an amateur
theatre. Conditions on the island were primitive. There were no
roads, and so no motor transport; Ray Mills did his rounds on
a white horse. But the main difficulty was the water supply which
from time to time almost gave out altogether at Panayia.

The day to day work was much the same as in any refugee camp.

"The work falls roughly into two categories---those things
which can be controlled by a little premeditation, e.g. distributions
(food, clothing, soap, lamps, bowls, paraffin, boots, blankets,
information), reports and statistics, labour, construction, hygiene,
and so on-and those things which descend out of the blue and
defy any effort to regulate them. Such are case-work of all kinds
(complaints, applications and personal problems generally), crimes
(fighting, black-marketing, prostitution) and any other day to
day headache worked up by the unpredictable refugee. It's difficult
to say which category produces the most grey hairs. A clothing
distribution over three days or so, when there aren't enough
clothes (for all the garments are of varying type and quality),
is no joy-ride. You start by examining the personal effects of
some hundreds of people who are doing their best to deceive you,
and then draw an arbitrary line between what you choose to call
"greater" and "lesser" need, which actually
decides those who shall receive something and those who don't
get anything at all. Everyone comes to the distribution of course,
and there is the job of weeding out the sheep from the goats.
No one is satisfied; those who take, demand (and very likely
need) more, while those who don't take (maybe 50 per cent.) become
your life enemies on the spot and plague you for weeks afterwards.

"On the other hand, one can have a most uncomfortable
half-hour with the man who draws rations for his wife and four
kids and eats the lot himself---or with the woman who has just
beaten up the camp policeman and insists she is a British Government
secret agent. The more adept the criminal the better is the story
he can tell, and though you start off with the assurance of squashing
him completely you can finish up by implicating half the decent
citizens of the camp."

At Fonte the Italians were not an easy crowd to handle.

"The camp is presided over by Tom Osborne and Minnie
Doherty, with a Greek Red Cross nurse. The committee is well
established, and I was able to attend one of its meetings with
Tom. The committee asked him to address the entire camp on the
implications of the end of the war so far as they were concerned,
since the refugees were becoming restless. A date was duly fixed
for this mass meeting; the speech was to be interpreted and then
printed and sent round for all to read. Tom then told them that
I had just arrived from Italy, so we spent an interesting hour
in which I answered as many of their questions as I could. One
feels sorry for them. They realize that they have no future in
the islands since feeling against them is strong. They have business
interests and homes, and added to that the Italian Government
is reluctant to have them in Italy. Their prospects are bleak
indeed."

Clinics were held in each camp, but the central hospital for
the island was in Ayia Marina. It had some twenty-five beds, and
altogether 250 people received some kind of medical treatment
each day.

To cope with the overflow from Kasos, some 700 refugees were
billeted in the villages of Karpathos until a tented camp to accommodate
5,000 could be erected in Effialti Bay. When the camp was ready,
it was put under the direction of an Army officer and the refugees
moved in. Six men were sent in March from Italy to reinforce the
three who had been at work there for five weeks, and later Miss
Saddler arrived from Simi and Marjorie Herron from Kasos to get
the camp hospital of thirty beds going; Dr. Peter Early assumed
responsibility for it when he arrived at the end of April. By
this time the Army had withdrawn from the work and left the full
responsibility for refugees to the Unit under Frank Harwood, who
acted as Camp Commandant.

Karpathos had roads, not mere tracks as did Kasos, and transport
was available from the Army Transport Unit. Gradually most of
the Greek refugees from Kasos were moved to Effialti Bay. "The
end of the war found 3,500 refugees herded into this camp, with
the permanent off-sea wind blowing down a few more tents each
day, and people becoming more fed up at the cramped accommodation
and chlorinated water supply. The Unit had the job of returning
the refugees to their homes. Unfortunately it wasn't until June
that a start could be made in emptying Kasos and Karpathos of
refugees. The task was completed in under a month, camp staffs
growing haggard with the unannounced ships arriving at all hours,
necessitating the laborious processes of nominal rolls, withdrawal
of stores, etc., being carried out by the light of our two remaining
pressure lamps."

And so the third phase of work in the Dodecanese began. With
the end of the war Rhodes was open.

Three days after the occupation of the island by British troops,
Lewis Waddilove, on a visit to the Dodecanese section, wrote of
the town of Rhodes:

"It is a lovely city, and the Italians have spared no
expense in its development. After the primitive conditions of
other islands I found myself in a good hotel. Hot and cold laid
on, and a balcony looking over the beach and sea to the Turkish
coast. That, however, was the beginning and end of luxury in
Rhodes. The food situation had been relieved by Red Cross supplies
allowed through the blockade. The condition of the people had
thereby improved considerably from the state of those who had
escaped from the islands in earlier months. The Red Cross ration
was, however, small, and equal to about 1,000 calories. It was
interesting to be assured that the Germans had allowed the distribution
to proceed without interference, despite the fact that their
own need was acute."

The British authorities decided on a special hospital to draw
off the worst malnutrition cases, so that special feeding could
be provided. The three men and Greek Red Cross nurse left on Simi,
where the work was virtually at an end---it was finally closed
by Valerie Gargett at the end of the month---were immediately
transferred to Rhodes with a refugee staff of eight, and Marjorie
Herron came across from Karpathos. Gradually other members joined
them, until at the end of August the last member of the section
arrived---John Wigzell, who had stayed behind on Kasos with the
Italians at Fonte Camp, which was the last to be cleared. It had
now become possible to organize the section as one group; Frank
Harwood had been appointed section leader for the purpose, and
a separate office established in the Unit's flat from which all
activities were co-ordinated, the Unit assuming responsibility
for certain specific projects rather than allowing its personnel
to be scattered over too wide a field.

The consequent work of the Rhodes section, as valuable and
satisfying to the workers as any piece of work the Unit ever undertook,
fell naturally into two main divisions---medical and general relief.

The first emergency job was the establishment at the Miramare
Hotel of a 100-bed hospital for malnutrition cases. By the end
of July the arrival of more members made possible, at the request
of the Military Administration, a more ambitious scheme---the
establishment of a 135-bed general hospital at the Terme Hotel,
a modern four-storey building which, except for the size of the
rooms, was ideally suited for the purpose. For it the Unit provided
the medical director (and for a time a second doctor), the matron
and some nursing staff, the lay administration and quartermaster.
Each day three clinics were held, and in addition a special clinic
for scabies and impetigo. The aim from the beginning was to hand
over to locally trained staff and members of the Greek Red Cross.
By the end of November Unit staff was able to withdraw.

There were other jobs undertaken---Peter Strevens was attached
to the Public Health Department of AT(B)1 as adviser in dietetics,
with a view especially to improving the ration in hospitals; Susie
Carter organized a V.D. clinic; while in July and August Ray Mills
and Eric Hughes spent six weeks on the island of Leros to reorganize
the civilian hospital there. They returned to Rhodes for supplies
and equipment, and then stayed on to see the hospital in working
order before handing it over to Italian nuns.

But medical work was not the only need. From the time when
the first refugees returned to Rhodes, it was obvious that there
would be work on relief and rehabilitation. The B.M.A. had established
a food ration of some 1,800 calories, but it was useless to the
refugees unless they could pay for it. And not only the majority
of the refugees, but also many of the people who had stayed behind
in Rhodes, were completely destitute. About 600 people had been
temporarily accommodated under shocking conditions in two local
schools.

Eric and Valerie Gargett addressed themselves to the problems
of relief. Eric set up a Relief Office, and as Secretary of the
Central Relief Committee he obtained permission to distribute
the Committee's funds. Progress was only gradual; at one point,
indeed, he was obliged to resign with interesting results. He
had asked the Committee for a sum of £350 for temporary
relief, but although it was agreed to, it was impossible to obtain
the cheque. He explained the position to a crowd of poor and destitute
waiting outside the town hall and told them that they would have
to apply to the authorities themselves. This they did in no uncertain
way, and the next day Eric went back into business with a cheque
for £2,700 without conditions, after which relief work went
ahead.

Valerie Gargett, responsible for re-housing, worked for a Billeting
Order, which was obtained only after long delay and a great deal
of pressure on the authorities. When it at length appeared, it
was possible to set up a Housing Office, through which 250 of
the refugees were billeted, while the remainder were moved into
better accommodation in the Italian Military Hospital, under a
Greek supervisor. When the Terme Hospital was opened, the Miramare
Hotel became a transit camp for the many refugees who were being
returned to Rhodes for "forwarding" to other islands,
while Marjorie Herron, making use of International Red Cross stores,
started a milk clinic in the old city, where very soon over 1,500
children under six and pregnant women were receiving milk daily.
The scheme was extended to most of the villages of the island.
Penrhyn Jones spent some time in sorting, checking and listing
the Red Cross stores which had been taken over by the Central
Relief Committee. Apart from supplies issued to hospitals and
institutions, and those included in the B.M.A. ration, there was
a remainder which it was decided to sell in aid of the relief
fund. He therefore opened a shop, which proved a great success.
The quantity sold to any one person was limited to prevent black
market activities and to ensure fair distribution. In one month
sales reached the figure of £2,000.

Meanwhile the Relief Office, administering over £10,000
a month, had quickly exhausted the Central Committee's funds,
and begun to draw on the B.M.A. This made possible the extension
of relief to the Italian and Turkish communities. The programme
involved constructional work, the import of olive trees and the
revival of the sponge industry. For the Italian refugees returned
from Kasos, a new camp was organized in the palatial residence
of the former Italian governor at Monte di Profeta. Frank Blackaby
extended the relief system to the forty-four villages on the island,
and John Wigzell was appointed to extend it to the island of Kalimnos.
A visit to survey the needs of Tilos and to distribute food and
clothing had already been made by two members in June and early
July.

As in many other spheres of Unit work, the adverse effects
of continued Poor Relief were soon recognized. Nearly all fit
men were removed from the lists, and in town and villages Public
Works were started to provide employment for them.

Towards the end of the year the devolution of the medical work
was practicable and so desirable ; to maintain the welfare and
relief work outside support was still required. But in November
U.N.R.R.A. entered the field and by taking over several Unit members
with the relief work which they had initiated, ensured its continuation.
Early in 1946 the Unit's responsibilities in the Dodecanese came
to an end.

There is no doubt that in the final assessment of the Unit's
work throughout the world the year spent in the Dodecanese must
rank as one of the most successful episodes. There was an obvious
and limited objective of short-term relief for which a temporary
organization, if it was prepared to adapt itself to any circumstances
that arose, was particularly suited; the need, as many visiting
Army officers confessed, was one which would not otherwise have
been met ; relations with the Army authorities were always excellent;
and nowhere within a military area was the Unit granted such complete
freedom to organize its work in its own way. The appreciation
of the Unit's efforts by those for whom the work was done was
shown in a letter from the Mayor of Rhodes to the section leader
to say that a plaque was to be set up in front of the Terme Hospital
to commemorate the Unit's stay. Nor must it be forgotten that
the fascination of life in the islands, the loveliness of sea
and mountains, the friendliness of the people, provided a setting
in which any section of the Unit would be anxious to justify itself.

JUGOSLAVIA

THE UNIT HAD experience of work among Jugoslavs in Italy and
the Middle East. Impressed by their vigour and sense of purpose,
many members had set their hearts on working among them in their
own land. But a national rebirth breeds national exclusiveness,
and entry into the country and movement within it were hedged
round by so many restrictions and safeguards that it was surprising
that Unit teams destined for Jugoslavia were able to work there
at all. As it was, only two teams, the Medical Supply and Transport
Unit and a Field Bacteriological Unit, were able to enter the
country, and their entry was long delayed.

"The problem of travel for a foreigner, or indeed, until
recently, for a native, is comprised in the word 'permit'. I
have never had so many pieces of paper by which to be identified.
There is first a pass to enter the country, and a strong case
must be made before it is issued. Then a separate pass must be
obtained for each journey out of Belgrade. At frequent intervals
there are check posts. Sometimes the single word 'English' will
allow one to pass without question; at others, elaborate notes
are taken of the pass and the number and make and load of the
vehicle, and a general search is made. One member of the M.S.T.U.
once overran a check post in error, and was rewarded with a bullet
in his rear tyre."

Map VI. North-West Europe and
Austria

Inevitably, it was this suspiciousness of foreigners which
obtruded itself most noticeably at first, because it was the factor
which most of all affected the work which the sections were trying
to do. It was but a symptom of the wave of nationalist enthusiasm
which had in it, combined with intolerance and ruthlessness and
the seemingly unavoidable rise of a new privileged class, many
refreshing elements after life in Greece and Italy.

"One is conscious of an 'authority' that runs from Belgrade
down to the most remote village. In Greece a law may be solemnly
passed in Athens, and one may be told in Ipiros that it will
not apply. In Jugoslavia there is a sense of purpose and direction
everywhere. The Partisans may well be going in the wrong direction,
but at least they are going somewhere. The Jugoslavs are proudly
independent, and insist they can do everything for themselves,
given the supplies. The result is that their progress in reconstruction
is slow, but sure. They are gaining experience painfully, but
in a year's time there will obviously be a lot of ground recovered,
and, perhaps more important, well consolidated. In Greece, they
will accept almost any help that is offered: from the long-term
point of view, I believe it will not be much good to them. When
the support is withdrawn, there will be a big fall backwards:
when help is withdrawn from Jugoslavia, provided supplies continue,
it will not make the slightest difference."

53. Displaced Persons on the
move:
North-West Europe

54. "A mixture of innumerable
nationalities"

The Unit teams destined for Jugoslavia under M.L. and U.N.R.R.A.,
with the exception of the Field Bacteriological Unit, had left
Maadi for Italy at the end of November 1944. There followed protracted
negotiations throughout the winter, the intricacies of which need
not here be entered into---M.L. and U.N.R.R.A. anxious that with
their supplies should go personnel to ensure fair distribution,
the Jugoslavs insisting that given the supplies they could do
the rest themselves. At last, in March 1944, six members of the
M.S.T.U. arrived in Jugoslavia and began work distributing supplies
from the two ports of Split and Dubrovnik. Over the next two months
reinforcements arrived and the number grew to seventeen, with
two workers of the Save the Children Fund attached who could not
get on with the job which they had arrived to do.

The work from Split and Dubrovnik was similar; a store was
established in which imported supplies were received, and convoys
of trucks ran the supplies to provincial centres under instructions
received from the Jugoslav authorities. At the time that U.N.R.R.A.
entered the country and took over from M.L., the Unit was the
only foreign group in the country rendering direct service to
the Jugoslavs, and there is no doubt that it carried out work
which the Jugoslavs themselves were unable to do for lack of transport
and of drivers.

Road and driving conditions were as bad as any encountered
by the Unit anywhere:

"Knowledge that had been acquired at Failand and Hackney
came in very useful, as the state of the roads and the amount
of low gear work to be done had their effect on the trucks. The
roads, which are unsurfaced, and which have never been very good,
are in an extremely bad way after five years of neglect. Relaxation
at the wheel is impossible, as the roads are tortuously serpentine
(a preceding truck at only 200 yards distance will perhaps not
be visible for ten miles or so, although one collects all the
dust sent up by it, and can adjust the convoy spacing by its
density). Mountain roads are usually cut out of the rock face
at a given contour with a drop of several hundred feet at one
side. Bridges which had been constructed out of what was nearest
to hand gave us some anxious moments. One consisted of rows of
loose planks laid on three barges (Faith, Hope and Charity) which
dipped, swayed and buckled in the most alarming fashion. Another
was composed of a flexible base slung on wire hawsers. The whole
structure creaked, groaned and swung as we took up the slack.
The more devout of our passengers crossed themselves frequently
; we maintained Quakerly silence and tried to look unconcerned."

In their cargoes there was endless variety.

"The loads consisted of clothing, canned food, tinned
milk, potatoes, drugs and dressing units, Jugoslav Red Cross
stores, U.N.R.R.A. and M.L. medical supplies, Partisan Military
Hospital supplies, D.D.T., anti-typhus and anti-typhoid vaccines,
anti-malarial equipment, soap, the complete necessities for fully
equipping 40-bedded and 200-bedded hospitals, veterinary supplies,
food and clothing for French Displaced Persons returning from
Germany. These were the official loads. Returning, or incidental,
loads were often most interesting. A group of Jugoslav hitch-hikers
is probably one of the world's most colourful groups; embroidered
peasant costumes, bright headdresses, veils, and baggy trousers,
gold coins slung across foreheads. The Partisans are armed with
anything from a sub-machine gun to a revolver (Partisan girls
are usually content with a few hand grenades swinging at the
belt). A partisan hitch-hiker is usually prepared to back up
his claim for a lift with his rifle and most people have had
their trucks shot at some time or another. Besides the casual
hitch-hiker we often carried returning refugee families ; some
of them we had met before in the refugee camps in Egypt. Part
of the Italian Garibaldi Division was transported to the ports
for repatriation. Loads of furniture, household pets, domestic
animals and aged grandmothers were not infrequent, whilst a quantity
of live crated pigs squealed its way fairly happily across Montenegro.
We used our trucks as hearses on at least two occasions, firstly
when a number of suffocated Albanians failed to revive after
all our efforts at artificial respiration, and secondly when
we picked up the victims of a lorry which had failed to make
a corner."

For a short time stores and distribution work from Split and
Dubrovnik continued, personnel being concentrated at one place
or the other according to the pressure of work. By the beginning
of July the Unit had carried over 800 tons of material over a
distance of 65,000 miles. Despite official watchfulness, individual
Jugoslavs were friendly enough. At their destination drivers were
often fed from a Partisan kitchen, and there was no lack of hospitality,
though conversations had to be skilfully negotiated.

"The idea of a crowd of British people coming over to
Jugoslavia to do a disinterested job of work is something that
the Jugoslav mind cannot grasp. Although there may not appear
to be an ulterior motive for our presence, the Partisans assume
that there must be one. We found that, like all British and Americans,
we were at the receiving end of a non-fraternization policy."

Journeys were undertaken farther afield ; three trucks were
set to work at Cetinje in Montenegro; two members went north to
Sibenik; and finally there were journeys through Mostar, Sarajevo
and Zvornik to Belgrade with supplies for Serbia and Macedonia.
But difficulties were on the increase. U.N.R.R.A. moved from Split
to Belgrade and new regulations were issued regarding passes for
U.N.R.R.A. personnel generally. The freedom to obtain passes from
local authorities ended ; henceforth all passes for all journeys
had to be obtained from military headquarters in Belgrade, two
days' drive from the ports. Meanwhile, the Jugoslav had also set
up a new Medical Stores Commission to be responsible for the transport
of medical supplies, and by the beginning of August it was clear
that the M.S.T.U.'s original work had come to an end.

But the section was anxious not to withdraw until all other
possible spheres of work had been considered ; and after various
discussions in Belgrade, and with the agreement of U.N.R.R.A it
was decided that they should work for the Jugoslav Red Cross.
The fact of working for a native organization had its effects;
within twenty-four hours the team had received general passes
for two months covering the whole country. But the work, which
began with the transport of American and Jugoslav Red Cross supplies,
was not to last for long. The Jugoslav scheme for training drivers
had made progress, and the Red Cross was to have a share of the
several thousands of trucks which were being sent into the country
by U.N.R.R.A. The section became too small to operate its fourteen
trucks, and in the state of transport in the country the arrangement
for keeping them under a separate administration could no longer
be justified. It would be worth reinforcing the section---assuming
that entry permits were available---only if there was a prospect
of some months of solid work; in fact it was only a matter of
weeks before the snows of winter arrived. So it was agreed that
U.N.R.R.A. should allow all the trucks to be handed over to the
Jugoslav Red Cross to be handled by drivers whom they were confident
they could obtain. A few members were to stay on to recondition
the vehicles before they were finally transferred and to coach
the Jugoslavs in convoy driving, and the Unit was to make arrangements
for tyres and spares. And so, at the beginning of December, the
M.S.T.U. came to an end.

One woman member worked in Jugoslavia; Angela Martin was seconded
to the Health Division of U.N.R.R.A. in Belgrade throughout the
summer and transferred to work with the Jugoslav Red Cross at
the same time as the M.S.T.U.

Most ill-fated of all the Balkan teams was No. 1 Field Bacteriological
Unit. Formed in Egypt in the autumn of 1944, it spent the winter
in Maadi. Transferred to Italy, it went on waiting. In April 1945
its leader, Denis Greenwood, visited Jugoslavia with a Save the
Children Fund doctor to discuss the help that voluntary societies
might give. In June the section was still in Italy standing by,
while its counterpart for Greece, formed later, had long since
been at work. But the time in Italy was not wasted. A great deal
of extra equipment was obtained, and many refinements added to
the section's seven-ton laboratory truck. If only it were wanted,
it was ready to do a good job.

There were obvious reasons why the team, like others destined
for Jugoslavia, should be disbanded for other work, but equally
strong ones for keeping it together. At last, in August and September,
it moved across the Adriatic, and found itself in Sarajevo.

But its troubles were not at an end. The central authorities
in Belgrade had made no advance arrangements, and while Denis
Greenwood soon found a niche, the rest were not being used as
a team. Denis was attached to the local Hygiene Institute which
had a well equipped laboratory; he was able to help in introducing
the laboratory work necessary for the use of penicillin and to
promote new techniques of dealing with excremental diseases.

For the section as a whole it was ruefully decided that, unless
a more obvious field was available, the axe, so often threatened,
should at last be applied. And then the move that they had waited
for took place; they were to go to Derventa, some 10 miles from
Sarajevo, to cover a rural area where they would obviously be
needed. George Series went on ahead with a small truck---for a
broken bridge made the transport of the seven-tonner for a time
impossible---and reported that the local hospital would welcome
help, particularly with a thorough bacteriological survey of the
waterholes and wells in the region. Then at last, in mid-October,
with the bridge rebuilt, the whole team moved to Derventa, and
established a permanent laboratory and workshop in the Agricultural
College there, while using the mobile laboratory and other transport
to collect and test specimens in outlying villages.

Many of the wells, which were almost all shallow and uncovered,
were found to be contaminated, and a scheme of water sterilization
was started, while the authorities prepared for the construction
of deeper and more adequately protected wells. Throughout the
winter work continued, largely on typhus and typhoid and dysentery,
which had reached epidemic proportions. Kahn tests for syphilis
also received attention, and an attempt was made to popularize
D.D.T. as an insecticide.

During the spring of 1946 the same question faced the section
as faced the Unit in other parts of the world. Much of the value
of what had been done would be lost if the F.A.U. withdrew without
ensuring that the work was taken over by the local health authorities
and continued with their own personnel. Discussions were initiated
with U.N.R.R.A. and the Health Ministry in Sarajevo ; the latter
readily agreed to take over responsibility for the unit, which
it envisaged as one of four field units which were now to be developed
and employed in Public Health in the state of Bosnia. As F.A.U.
members were one after the other withdrawn, Jugoslavs were attached,
and on 10th June responsibility was finally transferred. There
was every prospect that what had been begun would be continued,
and that a few months of work following on many months of waiting
would not have been in vain.